If You HAD to Buy A New SSD for Video Editing TODAY...

Let the debate begin! What SSD would you buy to get the most out of Speed, Capacity & Trust/Reliability? Side note: I really need to get a new SSD - mine are too old!

I do appreciate the breakdown. Thank you for this thoughtful video. 🙌🏾

Also, my Sandisk 2TB failed me as well creating a healthy paranoia around it's viability. Now, I use it for short term data transfer to clients.

I bought a Netac nv7000t 4Tb ssd
and case Orico m243c3-u4

Write/read speeds (for Thunderbolt 4 MacBook Pro M1 Max 32/1Tb)
Internal ssd 5800/5400
NTFS 900/1500
MacOS Extended 2000/2800
APFS 2300/2800

Thanks for this video Matthew. Found it really helpful. Wondering what you would recommend for a desktop/non-portable hard drive for editing? Looking for something that's more than 5T. I have used OWC in the past and found them very reliable.

I've used several OWC products since 2011. I would definitely recommend their drives. I bought a 1tb Envoy Pro for when I need to edit projects on the go and it's great.
Since I mostly edit short content, it's fine, but like you mentioned - I have to be super organized dealing with only 1tb of storage. I should have gone with a 4tb so I could spend less time organizing files and more time editing.

I just bought a T9 and with the included USB to USB C cable I’m only getting 190 MB/s to a late 2012 i7 iMac

Would you recommend the new Samsung T9 4TB SSD? It's currently selling for $250 as of Cyber Monday 2023.

I use a SanDisk Extreme Pro and it's been fine handeling 1440p gaming footage at 60fps for a while, but these days it randomly disconnects from my mac WHILE i'm editing. Thankfully final cut is good at autio saving, but still super frustrating. I'm on an M1 Mackbook Pro and really need an SSD that's reliable and with good write speeds

Even SanDisk flash drives are hit and miss, so hearing about their external hard drives doesn’t really surprise me.

You probably know by now that Samsung have released the T9, with claimed transfer rates of 2000MBps for the 4TB version. On a side note, I've read a review comparing the 4TB Samsung T7 Shield with the 4TB Crucial X9 Pro, and the Crucial just came out on top with regard to transfer speeds, plus it's cheaper than the T7.

I stand by OWC wholeheartedly! I took a deep breath and invested in a Mercury Pro U.2 SSD drive with 32 TB capacity, and speeds (which I’ve confirmed are accurate) of almost 2,800 MB/S!!! And at £3000 that’s an incredible price for such a reliable, high-capacity, fast storage solution. The Mercury itself is bulky and not exactly portable (it suits my needs as I edit mainly at my desk) but they have a similar product with identical specs called the Thunderblade which is super portable, completely quiet (boasts an impressive heat-sink) and I would’ve gone for that if it wasn’t for the fact the Mercury is user-upgradable and easier to repair. Both devices come with software to configure them in any RAID configuration, which is just fantastic.

OWC Thunderblade- been using it for about 5 years. It is incredible.

I regret not spending more on internal storage from apple also, or maybe just going pc. I have had issues finding a reliable ssd for my m1 MacBook Pro 1TB from the beginning, the ssd I used previously wouldn't work well and became glitchy, it was fine when used on my 15" MBP, except that I would often get the "disk has been improperly ejected notice" I think probably after a certain update. I've wasted $200 on a 2TB San Disk Extreme when I bough the laptop a year ago and have been using that until I heard about the drives failing and so recently bought a Samsung 4TB T7 and am also having issues with it. On top of the usual problems of getting disk ejected improperly messages and sometimes not being able to eject the drive, it is laggy and slow in Lightroom and I've started getting beach balls. Only filled it up 1TB so far. I may actually return it. That's $400 wasted on external drives so far. I don't want to be having to editing on the internal and offloading all the time but it looks like I may need to go that route. With SanDisk and Samsung out I'm looking for another reliable drive. I was already on the fence with the Samsung due to their issues with the failing 980 Pros.

this is kinda terrible advice. the answer is to "cobble together" a zimaboard with multiple m.2 ssd-s that does parity and verifies data stored and read. the entire external ssd data loss thing is an absolute amateur thing to do when there are easily attainable much better alternatives. the drives are dirt cheap, under 4 cents per gigabyte, but it doesn't matter how good or bad they might be as we aren't trusting them to reliably report an error, the entire thing is more roboust than that.

currently the Samsung T7 Shield 4TB USB 3.2 is the one to go for.

My sandisk ssd failed last week

Do you miss the old era where we had internal hd drives, and everything seemed so easy in our lives?

I just picked up a T7 4TB rugged drive as the dual drive NVMe solution I had built died on me and I needed a replacement. The enclosure was a TB3 Sabrent dual NVMe board with external power. I used 2 WD Blue 2TB each NVMe, something happened to the box where the power was cut and no longer powering the unit. I tested the power supply, it was fine so the box itself died. No wonder they discontinued it. It was a great solution when it was working, got 2000 MB/s sustained, I raided 0 for JBOD so I could get the speed and the space. So I headed on over to yea ole Best Buy and purchased the Samsung T7 and never looked back, this was about 2 months ago. Formatted it APFS since SSD benefits from that file format. I was able to edit 4k just fine on that drive, managed to get my job done while on the road. Hot tip, I used a 13inch Espresso display for a 2nd screen, love that setup as I am used to multiple monitors and only having the 16inch MBP was limiting, that 2nd display was crucial!

I had 2 of the 4 tb extreme adds that had my main footage and my backup. They both failed Ugh.

I just bought a Samsung T7 4TB few days ago, as it was affordable 4TB external SSD for me. The other choice is Crucial X8 4TB, which I should've gotten. I just watched another review that T7 can become slow for big file transfer (going from 1000MB/s down to 400MB/s) vs Crucial X8 which I seems to stay at 800MB/s. I haven't tested it yet though.

thanks I always used Samsung T7 05 T5

I use samsung T5 and T7 Shield and no problems so far!

I've been waiting for this for a while. I HAVE TO get my schtick together!

Matthew, great video. I have been using T5s and T7s from Samsung. I prefer the non-ruggedized versions because physical labels will stick to them. Thank you for sharing.

I would still consider something like the OWC Envoy Express with a samsung 980pro in it. The quality of the interface and especially power management is very important and so far I have had good experience with OWC stuff. Even out of the SLC cache, a 980pro will still sustain faster speeed than the T7.

Cross posting on your Twitter as well: I still think a properly built raid array or NAS (my personal favourite is still TrueNAS) is the best long term solution. My TrueNAS server that connects through 10Gbe has all HDD, no SSD at all and I edit multicam hours long 4k60 projects directly from it.

I use an OWC RAID enclosure with two Seagate IronWolf drives. This serves as my main back-up of all footage I have loose on my other drives. Couldn't afford more than a 500GB Samsung T7 years ago when my WD HDD was clunking out while I used it for editing. 😰 Safe to say I was dancing on the razor's edge with that spinning drive. The T7 works really well, but the capacity is making me hit a brick wall on my current short film project. Hoping to upgrade sometime to a T7 Shield 2 or 4 TB.

I used to use SanDisk years ago. Had a problem with it and never wanted to try it again.
I do have a hard drive from Seagate which is fine. Is 1TB and I use most for backup. The material is not that great so it kind of bothers me sometimes if this hard drive will ever fail.
I started using Glyph this year and I have to say I absolutely love them.
They are super reliable and fast not to mention their amazing customer service.
I did buy the Atom EV portable SSD with 4TB.
I just reached to them this morning to get some recommendations for a backup store device and I’ll definitely be buying Glyph drives again.

I had a 2 Tb Sandisk Extreme fail on me about a year ago and it was a nightmare. By the way Sandisk do not make it easy to even replace it but eventually they sent me one. Now I would only use it for non critical data.

Glyph drives are all I've used for years. They're the most reliable and their warranty is insane. I don't trust any other company with my media.

Right before the SanDisk Extreme Pro debacle began, I ordered one on Amazon. Failed. Returned it and ordered a replacement thinking faulty unit. That failed. Returned it. Went with the OWC Envoy Pro FX, and it's fantastic. It's thunderbolt connection is fast, and doesn't heat up like the SanDisk Extreme Pro (my older version still works fine), or the Samsung T7 I also use. Great video. Thanks.

Have a SanDisk 2 TB drive. It died rather quickly. Then it worked. Then it didn't work. Then maybe one more cycle, and it's basically a brick now, as far as I'm concerned.

I’ve not yet had any issues with my Samsung T5 1tb but I always offload it to another drive and then backup to the cloud.

Haha… I have the 8 TB M1 MacBook Pro and two external hard drives 10 TB and back everything up onto those … when dealing with clients I don’t mess around.😂 that’s one nightmare I don’t wanna live

Great video and well-timed! Looking for an SSD currently and was considering the SanDisk… yikes!

I tried an OWC drive a while back, but my computer didn’t even recognize it and even after troubleshooting with their tech support, I wound up having to return it. Kind of put a bad taste in my mouth, but it’s probably not a common user experience (just a common me experience 😅)

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the Tropic Color SSD that recently came out though! The specs on that look pretty insane!

If you want sheer speed and durability, you can't go wrong with the OWC Envoy Pro FX. For speed and portability, the OWC Envoy Pro Elektron. The only down side is the max capacity of that one is 2 TB (if that's a down side). I love and use them both.

I was this guy trying custom ssds with enclosures, with all that problems you mentioned, mostly not reaching that top speeds… until this year I bought the 4tb internal option on my m2max. There was no better choice I had made for my setup which feels so painful when buying it, so pointless when receiving the computer and so rewarding when in the midst of editing 1-2 smaller projects at a time or a 40 min show and still have 1TB available and just don’t worry about storage basically.
I guess the reselling is not as good too, but really the peace of mind and practicality is unbeatable. And everything what makes you feel better at work makes you work better. So worth it for sure!
For the external I actually was apparently lucky and almost only have the sandisks without failures (the 1gbit ones)…fingers crossed.

Appreciate your informations. (Maybe your voice editing needs some rethinking. It is very muffeled - getting unhuman sounding)

My old external SSD is Samsung 850 EVO 500GB in PATRIOT 2.5 GAUNTLET 4 USB 3.1 box.
Next was Samsung 980 Pro 2TB in Acasis USB4 (Thunderbolt 3) box.

If i should buy now I would buy Samsung 990 Pro 4TB if it awable or Seagate FireCuda 530 4TB and the same Acasis USB 4 box.

Maybe Samsung T7 Shielt 4TB, but after my Samsung 980 Pro Thunerbolt 3 it's look slow...

Dude I love your videos. they’re straight to the point and very informative but you’re hard editing sounds like you haven’t taken a breath in 30 minutes of talking. It actually wears me out just listening to it. 😂

Fantom extreme 2TB SSD Thunderbolt 3 external drive. Small and very fast. Looking at the 4TB version next.

Build your own. Get a decent NVME drive. You can get a 4TB M.2 DRAM-less for $250, or $300-ish for a drive with DRAM. Then buy a USB to M.2 adapter, or a TB to M.2 adapter if you want faster transfers.

Great video Matthew!

Glyph goes on sale cheap a few times a year, I got the 4 tb for $500 a few months back, same price I paid for the 2 tb a few months before that. they also do pay over time, I have a few, thats all I use for edits then I dump to g drives. They are fast as BALLS!

what do you think. I store my source files at SSD 1 and store my working files at SSD 2. would that 'speed up' (ya I always carry two SSD when working)

For me in New Zealand the MacBook Pro 16" was already a major stretch in my budget - as it's $4000 NZD. For an extra $250NZD I bought a Samsung T7 2TB. Would have been an extra grand and a bit for a 2 or 4 TB and I was already pushing my luck going for a 16" in the first place. SSD works great for any large projects. Majority of jobs I can do with the onboard storage, and then I delete and archive it on the SSD:)

Great info as always! I just ordered the Samsung T7 Shield 4TB during Prime Day, they went down to $199. I use that for a copy/backup drive for video files. My primaries for editing are the Sabrent 4TB Nano SSD (about 1000mb) and the OWC Envoy Pro (that thing is a tank). I also did a build-your-own with an ACASIS and an internal 4TB drive. It's blazing fast but gets so hot (even with the thermal pad thingy), I'm kinda leary about using it for long editing sessions. Really bummed about the whole Sandisk debacle. Purchased 4, returned 4. Drives me nuts that all the online retailers pushed the fire sale discounts on those drives. Whenever you view recent comments about them, they all mention the drive failure issues. I know there's a firmware fix for um, but can't/won't trust any of their drives for a while.

I got a 1TB internal on my iMac only to a year later switch to all 4K now I wish I had at least 2tb internal. I’ll have to gander at glyph